


The End of Winter's War

by Morbane



Category: Captain America (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:14:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22659913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morbane/pseuds/Morbane
Summary: Bucky falls from the train - and from the world.Edmund, saved by a traitor, makes good his debt.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Edmund Pevensie
Comments: 6
Kudos: 38
Collections: X-Ship - The Crossover Relationship Exchange 2019





	The End of Winter's War

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aurilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/gifts).



It was a curious thing, that Turkish Delight. It coated Edmund's throat in sweetness and loosened his tongue - so far, in fact, that when the Queen asked him for the third time if he really had two sisters and one brother, and they were all human, just as he was, he forgot to be afraid of her, and asked, "But what about him? Isn't he human, too?" And he pointed at the driver of her sleigh - which was another indication of what the Turkish Delight had done to his manners.

The driver had not yet spoken a word. He looked at Edmund, and Edmund flinched from the strange fixed gaze that met his. Out from the shadow of his long hair, the driver's eyes were icy blue.

"My knight," said the Queen, "was once a Son of Adam, but cleaves no longer to that kind. He serves me in return for his life, which I restored to him when he was near to death."

It sounded terribly chivalric to Edmund, like something out of the legend of King Arthur. The driver dropped his eyes, and returned to staring straight ahead.

"Tell me," the Queen said again, reaching for Edmund's chin with long and shining fingernails, "did you say you are the youngest but one?"

* * *

Mr. Beaver was saying, "When you meet anything that's going to be Human and isn't yet, or used to be Human once and isn't now, or ought to be Human and isn't, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet."

"What do you mean, used to be Human once and isn't now?" Susan asked.

"Like the Witch's Knight," Mrs. Beaver said, with a shudder. 

Edmund had been edging backwards, almost at the door, but he stopped to listen, just a little longer.

"Who's that?" Peter asked.

"The only other Son of Adam to come to Narnia for all of the Witch's reign," Mr. Beaver explained. "He fell through a gap between worlds, and she made him into her servant. She turned his bones to stone so that he could never fulfil the prophecy, and it gave him the strength of a giant. But they say," and here his voice dropped to a portentous murmur, "that he wasn't all human even before that."

What prejudicial rot, Edmund thought, and he let himself silently out of the house with a feeling of great self-righteousness.

* * *

The very air was thawing, and Edmund could smell mud and flowers. The Knight strode ahead of him, the Queen sitting on his jutting stone shoulder as though it were a moveable throne, tugging Edmund behind them both on a leash like the sorriest pawn ever to tread in his betters' footprints.

They had been walking for hours, and the way had grown rougher and rougher for Edmund, however heedlessly the Knight strode on. Various animals and other creatures had come galloping and darting up to the Queen to confer with her, and the Knight and the Queen were speaking now together in low voices, in great agitation.

The Knight stopped in the dirty snow, and put the Queen down gently on her feet.

By great good luck - or so Edmund thought - they had stopped when Edmund was quite close to a tree, and he shuffled sideways to it and leaned against it in pathetic relief. There was a new leaf unfurling from it, straight from the trunk, near an old burl, and he watched it flutter with his breath, and shortly closed his eyes.

Then he heard the Queen say, quite close to him, "There, just like that," and when he looked up, she loomed above him, her stone knife gripped in both hands and raised high.

Edmund gave a startled jerk, like a creature may when it is already dead - and he felt this to be true. Then something moved in front of his face, and he heard the Knight say, "No." 

It dawned slowly on his understanding that the Knight had moved between him and the knife, and now pressed him warmly back against the tree, keeping the Queen from him.

"Ingrate!" the Queen hissed. "Then take from me the full gift you have earned, you cur!"

In front of Edmund's eyes, dark cloth lightened, a different and worse dawning. He was unable to look away as the Knight turned wholly to pale marble, cold as the creatures in the Witch's courtyard.

She was coming around the Knight to reach and stab at him, and he felt the shadow of her arms above him, and then there was a much more welcome commotion than any he had heard that day: a host of a dozen animals, crying and snapping at the Queen - and she was gone from above him, and eager paws and jaws were tugging at him, leaping up to snap at his snagged leash and free him, easing him out from behind his shield of stone.

Edmund looked back once as the Talking Animals carried him off to Aslan. The Knight's brows were knitted in anger, his lips parted over bared teeth.

He looked human.

* * *

After the four Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve were crowned at Cair Paravel, there was a great feast, and somewhere in the middle of it, Aslan slipped away.

"He comes and goes like that," Mr. Beaver told them. "He's not a tame lion, you know."

"Pity," said Edmund. "There was something I wanted to ask him."

And as the children grew into their powers and duties, there was much that Edmund found himself asking, and much that was asked of him; his voice was mighty in counsel, and merciful in judgment, and soft and inviting when it was others' speech that mattered most. 

And there was a habit he had, when a particular matter weighed heavily on his mind, of walking alone to a glade in the woods where one last remnant stood of the Witch's cruelty, and addressing his thought to the frozen figure there, as if the Knight could understand.

And there was a fancy he had that the Knight's marble gaze softened with the passing time, his brow smoothing, his snarling mouth closing ever so slightly over his teeth.

The first year passed of the reign of the royal quartet, and the second, and the third, and more, and they stopped talking of matters that could be decided only when Aslan returned - which proved, perhaps, the provocation of his return.

Such a time had passed that Edmund had attained almost the Knight's own height - and borne it steadily for the same amount of time again - when he could at last visit the Knight in the Lion's company; and a dwarf-crafted arm of metal was slung across his back.

"Here, Aslan," he said. "I have heard a hundred stories of the wicked things he did on the Witch's behalf. I have listened to those he wronged and felt their anger and worked to aid them. Even so, I would have him restored."

"Does he not deserve his fate?" the Lion asked.

"He does," replied the king, "as I deserved the Witch's claim on me. I would have him pay his debts in life, not death."

The trees shivered with the Lion's rumbling purr. "Then it pleases me, Son of Adam, to do as you ask." And Aslan breathed on the Knight and made him flesh again.

The Knight's frozen breath escaped him in a roar that would not itself have shamed a Beast; taking in the scene in front of him, he fell silent in perfect confusion, and Aslan fixed him with his great golden eyes.

The Knight did not look away.

"Be thou penitent, James Barnes, Son of Adam once more," Aslan said, "and I shall leave thee with the Witch's gift of strength, and match it. See you fit the arm to him, young king, and I will make of it a marvel."

And so it was done, and the Knight knelt on the grass before his new master, and so the Lion left them.

"I had not hoped for rescue," said the Knight.

"Nor had I," said Edmund.

* * *

Edmund led the way back through the trees, and the Knight followed. It was autumn, then, and the Dryads were absent and drowsing, and the Knight looked around him in wonder at the ruddy leaves the trees still clung to, and Edmund realised it was the first time the Knight had seen them in this land.

"How long were you in service here?" Edmund asked.

"I don't know," the Knight said. "Perhaps two years - perhaps five. I remember… things I did, but not the hours between. How long was I a statue?"

"Ten years," said Edmund. "How did they pass for you?"

"Like a dream," the Knight said. "One where you know you're asleep, but can't wake up. I knew you when I woke. I used to see you - your face as it changed - over the years, I guess."

Edmund laughed. "I think you'll find me changed in more than face." And found a truth for himself: he was Edmund the Just now, and his opinions held weight, and he need prove himself to no one in Narnia - except this man.

"When we get back to Court, it'll be all ceremony for a while. You'll have to earn their trust - I think you see the sense of that. But when we're alone, you can call me Ed, if you like."

"I was Bucky," said the Knight. "To my friends."

"Bucky," agreed Edmund Pevensie, and did not say, _Then you will be again._

* * *

* * *

It is sunset at Cair Paravel. The red light glints off metal - crowns and ornaments and a shining arm. The songs of the Sea Folk echo over the water - beautiful, but bringing yearning with them. Those who hear the singing draw closer to loved ones, or feel their absence keenly. 

Edmund cannot get any closer to Bucky than he already is, the wind whipping his hair and stealing a laugh from him as Bucky bends him over the parapet, pushing up his tunic. It is a stout wall, and has shrugged away many arrows - though none during the reign of four thrones - and serves as well as a bed for sport when a wild mood takes them both. The sea falls sheer away behind Edmund's shoulders, and Bucky above him fills up the sky, and the sunset glints in his eyes as well as off his arm.

"Don't lose my tabard for me, you wretch," Edmund says.

"Don't lose it yourself," Bucky replies, and watches in amusement as Edmund rises to the challenge and strips while halfway upside down, tucking both the discarded tabard and tunic underneath him in anticipation of a great need for padding. 

To confound his expectations, Bucky ignores Edmund's eagerly spread thighs and kisses him instead, moving across his body with a lazy lack of pattern. When Edmund has been teased into lifting himself up to meet Bucky's kisses, Bucky kisses his tense stomach instead, and Edmund falls backwards again with another laugh and a curse. It isn't the only game - Bucky wants to see how long he can keep him here without shivering, with the warmth of kisses and exertion balanced against the expanse of skin that he now bares to the evening breeze.

He relents when the sun falls below the water. Edmund takes Bucky's offered hand, slides to him across his rumpled clothing, grabs at it, and huddles with Bucky on the sheltered side of the wall. They could go in, but they won't bother - Edmund is famed for patience, but Bucky excels at testing it. Now, Edmund stops Bucky's attempt to stand with one hand on his chest, and bends to Bucky's cock instead. Perhaps when they wake in bed tomorrow they'll fuck to make the four-poster creak, but Edmund has earned the epithets of Even-Handed and Fair-Tongued twice over, and Bucky is not ashamed to come apart beneath him. He'll pay it back.

They have another candle's span before the sentries pass above them to light the evening lanterns, and they draw it out as long as they can - two figures hidden in the dark from all but each other, until they draw each other back into the light.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to e, R, and D - you know who you are!


End file.
